I am sitting in the car waiting for my kids to finish school, I am a little early today, an unprecedented feat. Hehe....This has not been a very good week for me, I had a bit of an emotional meltdown but it has been days and I am done melting down. Lol. Melted and remoulded. This does not mean that things are Ok, fine and dandy and candies and lollipops. I wish. I have chosen personal power over my feelings, understanding over repetitive replaying of things and events.My cousin went to a movie and she came up with such an amazing review of it, I should have remembered the name of the movie but as you can tell, I cannot remember. She shared this quote on her Facebook page and it resonated with me. So, I am sharing it with you here too, to serve as a reminder.QUOTE - "Surrender is a frightening word for some people, because it may be interpreted as passivity or timidity. Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control" -Sylvia Boorstein

These days, eating out is a luxury. Thanks, partly, to the new GST. It may be RM3.25 per meal but if you add it up, it can come up to quite a fair amount of extra money you have to pay. When you have a family and kids to feed, you start looking at things like that, not that I want to nitpick at things. I would also like to be nonchalant about it too and relax the rules a little when there's a party of gathering. How can you nitpick at things like that with friends and family, right? Spending time with each other is a rarity these days because of how busy everyone is and when you manage to put something together, GST is not even in the picture anymore. LOL

But on most days, I try my best to cook dinner at home. I rely heavily on automated kitchen toys to make this happen, though. Not the best thing for the environment but...heck, I am not Mother Teresa and I can't try to save the world all the time. I am human with human limits.

My friend dropped by for lunch with me today and she said something that we can NOW laugh about...but was stressed out over when our kids were younger.

She said she saw a mother crossing the streets, bringing her elder kid to school, with a baby strapped to her body, looking hassled, with a messily put-together ponytail, non-matching hair clips, rushing to bring her kid to school. THAT reminded her of me when I was staying at that apartment, with the school just right outside the condo.

I did the same. Wore the same type of messed up clothing. Had paper clips in my hair. Hassled. Rushing lunch while thinking about dinner, worrying about homework, having to work at the same time and without a proper support system because we've just moved into the new home.

We can laugh about it now because that period of my life, the most stressful one, is over. We are halfway through this parenting thing and we survived. Some non-parent friends may have judged me about the way I have been parenti…